For everyone else, regardless of where you live on the planet, get emergency kits. People who will have to ride out Sandy in place won't benefit from this 2010 repost, but it's a reminder to the rest of us:

It's hardly responsive to the Haiti quake, but I've been meaning to write about the earthquake/emergency kits I put together for Christmas presents. At least it's a way to lessen the burden on emergency services should something similar happen here.

There are nine members of my wife's family in the Bay Area, and when I found out no one had the 72-hour emergency kits we're supposed to have, I put them together as presents (in-laws loved the kits, too). My emphases were making them easy for me to put together, easy for people with no camping experience to use, and ones that would last as many years as possible without needing replacement or maintenance. In return I was willing to pay more, be more bulky than the minimum possible, and have limited control over food selection.

72-Hour Home kits:

Water in plastic jugs, 3 gallons/person

Iodine water-purification pills in case water goes bad (after 6 months, assume it's bad), in case it's leaked away, or in case you need more water (UPDATE: chlorine tabs have been suggested as lasting longer in storage than iodine)

Mountain Oven Flameless Heating Kit: each kit can be used 5 times and can prepare 2 meals at a time. So 2 kits per two people in a household, but also 2 kits in a single-person household.

Plastic silverware

Emergency phone numbers/contact list

The above is the absolute minimum. Meals can be eaten in their pouches, so no dishes are needed. Flameless heating kits eliminate the need for cooking stoves (water has to be purified, though). Emergency meals also can be eaten with cold (purified) water although they taste bad. The food and flameless kits should be good for at least 3 or 4 years, and probably more than twice that long.

Your kit should be stored outside your home in case you can't get inside. So in your yard, your car, or somewhere else. The only maintenance this requires is to simply look every six months to see if the water's leaked through the seams of the plastic jugs - it happens fairly often.

Additional useful items:

Cheap flashlight/headlamp

Spare batteries in clear plastic bag so you can see if they've become corroded over time

You can do much better than this car kit, but it's something in case destroyed roads/bridges keep you from getting home for 12-24 hours.

Additional tricks for both kits: put the contact lists in their own ziplock plastic bags to reduce the chance that they'll mold/get wet over the years. I've also found that the metal caps on the iodine bottles tend to rust over a few years, so I bagged them in their own ziplock bags, and poured a little table salt in the bags to absorb humidity.

Hopefully this is all unnecessary.

UPDATE: lots of great comments below, and a resource link at Making Light.

N.B. I've altered the posting time so Eli's post is seen above this one.

I'd like to say that 'cheap' flashlight isn't necessarly a great idea.LED torches nowadays are amazing, from small 1 AA battery ones to big lithium rechargeable ones that can light an entire room up or replace your car headlamp. Sure, they are more expensive than the cheap naff plastic LED lights that break as soon as you drop them, but one of mine has been dropped, spent 3 months outdoors in snow and ice and rain and still works fine.

In Scotland any car kit should have a blanket or two or three or sleeping bag, since sleeping in a cold car isn't fun.

I've been following Making LIght for years now, and they've lots of emergency prep posts. The most relevant for hurricanes are listed here, covering everything from emergency supplies to go bags. They'll provide more in depth information, whys and wherefores for anyone who is interest, than the post above does:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/014303.html

Better late than never department: Typical domestic hot water heater stores 50-80 gallons of potable water. There's a valve at the bottom that'll allow water to be drained from the tank. Before things go pear-shaped, turn off the water supply to the tank using the inlet valve so as to prevent contamination.

If you plan on using your DHW tank as a potable water reserve, turn off the electrical or gas supply to the heater.

The handcrank flashlight/radio combos are great - but be sure to look for a model that has a USB port on it so that you can charge your cellphones during an emergency. Often, in a crisis, your cellphone is your only link to family, friends, and emergency services.

Rabett Run

Subscribe Rabett Run

The Bunny Trail By Email

Contributors

Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional. His colleagues are smart, but they have a curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they occasionally heed his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.